


Dress Code (Photograph, Part Two of Two)

by spuffyduds



Series: Photograph [2]
Category: due South
Genre: 1000-3000 words, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-08
Updated: 2010-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:04:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds





	Dress Code (Photograph, Part Two of Two)

I'm driving Frase back from Sunday dinner at the Vecchios' when he suddenly reaches over, hand up near my face, and I'm thinking "What?" and maybe "Yay?" but he just tugs at my tie a little and gives a big sigh.

"What?"

"It _is_ a clip-on," he says. "I thought it looked suspicious. Really, Ray. I didn't know they even _made_ those for grown men."

*********************************************************

And usually I don't mind it when he gives me shit because I've figured out he only does that if he _likes_ you, but it's been a long damn afternoon. Three months I've been going for Sunday dinner, ever since I got the Vecchio gig. And it was rough from the start, because Mrs. Vecchio is trying _so_ hard to be kind, but sometimes I catch her looking at me with this terrible "Where is my SON?" face, like she's gonna cry any second, and then she always hustles off into the kitchen to bring out more food. And I know it's not my fault, but Jesus.

So I thought it would be better if Fraser came along, kinda dilute things, you know. But it's worse, because Frannie will not leave him alone. You can just SEE him tensing up through the whole meal, and it pisses me off that he won't tell her to leave him alone and it pisses me off that she can't figure out to leave him alone without him telling her.

But today it was worse even than usual, because Fraser got this little bit of tomato sauce just under his bottom lip and he didn't notice it, didn't wipe it off for a long time. And, you know, I thought the whole liplicking thing he does made me mental enough, but it started to make me way _more_ mental that he _wasn't_ doing it, that this little smear of (really excellent) tomato sauce was just _sitting_ there unmolested. So, you know, there I was with Ma Vecchio asking me if I wanted fourths and the idiot brother-in-law saying some idiot thing, and the five or six little Vecchio spawn squabbling and crawling under the table, and all I could do was look at Fraser's bottom lip and think about licking it off myself. So I _made_ myself not look at him, which was a mistake. Because then I looked at Frannie, and _she_ was looking at him, with her mouth open. Totally fucking pathetic. And I was pretty sure that was the totally pathetic look I'd had on my face two seconds ago. Not good.

***********************************************************

So, yeah, not so much in the mood for the Fraser teasing. But exactly none of this is his fault, so I bite back on all the things I want to say, and we're pulling up in front of my place anyway. He hops out of the car and I realize he's done that the last six or eight times, he doesn't even wait for me to invite him up anymore. And usually I would think that was great, the whole duet thing is working out, but: long damn afternoon, and I wouldn't mind not having to spend the rest of it looking at him in his perfectly ironed dress shirt and of course his _real_ tie, which probably has some kind of seventeen-step knot in it. I wouldn't mind having some time alone to calm down. Or, okay, to jerk off. Which is calming.

But he's right there, bumping and jostling me as we go up the stairs. Which is another Fraser weirdness. He's Mister Graceful most of the time but anytime we're headed somewhere together, he's pulling shit that would get a foul called on him in a pickup game in Cabrini Green. And I start trying to explain about the tie.

"It's kind of a cop thing, Fraser."

"Not knowing how to tie a tie is a cop thing, Ray?"

Asshole, I do _not_ call him. I very nicely say, "It's a not giving the bad guys a handle to choke you with thing."

I get my keys out and the door open, start to head into the kitchen to get us some drinks. "It's not, you know, a rule, but it's like the short hair and the no beards. Mostly cops are into not giving people anything to grab. You get into a fight with a perp while you're dressed up and he tries to strangle you with your tie, a clip-on pops right off. And while he's standing there being _surprised_ that it popped right off you have a chance to rearrange his face. Maybe the bad guys are too polite to try to strangle you in Canada, maybe it's one of those Marquis of Blueberry things, but here, clip-ons are good."

I'm being really fucking nice, here. I'm explaining things, I am giving him _cultural information_ which God knows he is into, and he completely blows it, because he gives my tie that sad look again, and goddamnit, says, "Ray _Vecchio_ never wore—"

And that's it. I am dropping glasses, ice everywhere, and I am somehow out of the kitchen and in his face and I've startled him or maybe even scared him a little because he backs up a step against the door, his head bangs and he winces. Good.

I open my mouth with no fucking _idea_ what's coming out of it, which Stell used to say was my problem until she started saying it was one of my many problems. And she's probably right, because what comes out is "Ray _Vecchio_ never did a _lot_ of things, even things he really _wanted_ to."

Fraser blinks at me. Says, "Ray, I'm not sure what you're getting at here, and I seem to have inadvertently upset you, and I'm sorry."

"What I'm getting at—" I say, and what the fuck am I getting at? Because the only way I can think to explain the Vecchio crack is with the picture, which I am not doing because that same picture is in _my_ wallet now, and I'm not going to say "See how pathetic the old Ray was, doing this same thing that I'm doing, and not doing anything _about_ the thing, which I am also not doing either?" and Fraser smells like tomato sauce, so I kiss him.

He tastes good, feels good. But he doesn't open his mouth or kiss back, I'm not sure he even _breathes_, I am getting _zero_ response here, so I pull back and look at him.

He looks—-stunned doesn't really cover it. He looks like--you ever get close up to the stage at a club, when there was some really high-energy band playing? Like, Fishbone or something, one of those acts where every second they're onstage they're totally fucking _on_, jumping up and down and spraying sweat all over the first few rows of the audience? Fraser looks like one of those guys who just walked OFFstage. Where if you're close enough you can see them just shut _down_, just turn _off_, not even _there_ anymore.

He's staring and blank and _gone_. I have fucked up completely, I have totally wrecked our duet, and also probably broke his brain. "Frase, you in there?" I say. I'm sort of patting his chest to make sure it's still moving. "Shit, I'm sorry--that was--that was STRESS. It's, uh, it's a cop thing! A Chicago cop thing, it's like, a local custom, sometimes when we get really stressed out we _kiss_ people, just randomly, whoever's there—"

Which is when I realize that his chest is _vibrating_ under my hand, sort of _buzzing_. "Fraser?" I say, and when I look at his face it's still blank but I can tell he's doing the buzzy thing all _over_, his hair is moving a little. I step back, a little freaked out, and look him up and down, and his hands are in fists, so hard the knuckles are white.

Oh. He's gearing up to punch me. And that's okay, not _fun_ or anything but better than him staying blank or running off. It might let us be even and start again and forget about this whole fucking stupid day.

So I close my eyes and I can feel the whoosh of a hand near my face, but there's no hit, he grabs me by the back of the head instead and pulls me in against him, chest to chest. He's still shaking and I don't, I don't know what's happening here, his arms are around my back, is this just I'll see your freaky cop kiss and raise you a freaky Canadian hug?

"Are we—-what are we—-are we okay, here, Fraser?"

He makes this terrible little noise. I've heard it before but only in the back of ambulances, it's a "This hurts like a motherfucker but it's been hurting so long that I'm too tired to be loud about it anymore," kind of noise. I _hate_ that noise. But then he drops one hand lower on my back, pulls my hips up against his. And no, this is not a hug, this is Fraser seriously hard against me.

I lean back a little, just from the waist up because I am not an idiot, and look at him, and he's back from wherever he went when he left the building. He doesn't look blank anymore, he looks completely terrified. But I can fix _that_, I can _work_ with that, so I kiss him again.

This time he kisses back. He kisses back hard, kind of sloppy and gaspy and too fast, and he's still shaking and his hands are clenched in the back of my shirt. It's like he thinks he has to get all the kissing he can in, before I _run_.

"Hey," I say into his mouth. "Hey, not going anywhere, breathe."

I lean into him hard, trying to damp down the shivers, and shift to kiss his neck above his dress shirt, and his ears, and rub my face in his hair. His hair's soft, and his neck is warm. I am liking this and he seems to too, because he starts to relax. Or most of him does.

When I get back to his mouth he's a lot calmer and it's a lot better. I finally, finally get to suck on that lower lip he was torturing me with, just nibble and pull and lick at it, and he makes mmmmmm noises and nibbles back. I am giving him some competition in the seriously hard department.

Which is when I realize that we're necking up against my door, and I am not fourteen and I _have_ a bed.

I step back, and holy shit he's a picture, all dressed up and his hair wrecked and his lips swollen and wet. God. And I can't resist, I grab his tie and pull and he stumbles up against me. "See?" I say in his ear. "These things are fucking _dangerous_," and start pulling him toward the bedroom.

 

\--END--


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